Answer to Question 1
The driving force behind the population ecology model of organizational birth is natural selection, the process that ensures the survival of the organizations that have the skills and abilities that best fit with the environment. Over time, weaker organizations, such as those with old-fashioned or outdated skills and competences or those that cannot adapt their operating structure to fit with changes in the environment, are selected out of the environment and die. New kinds of organizations emerge and survive if they can stake a claim to an environmental niche.
Answer to Question 2
The difference between a specialist and a generalist strategy is defined by the number of environmental nichesor sets of different resources (customers)for which an organization competes. Specialist organizations (or specialists) concentrate their competences and skills to compete for resources in a single niche. Generalist organizations (or generalists) use their well-developed competences to compete for resources in many or all niches in an environment.
By focusing their activities in one niche, specialists are often able to develop core competences that allow them to outperform generalists in that niche. Generalists can often outcompete specialists when there is considerable uncertainty in the environment and when resources are changing so that niches emerge and disappear continually. Generalists can survive in an uncertain environment because they have spread their resources over many niches. If one niche disappears they still have others in which to operate. If a specialist's niche disappears, however, there is a much higher chance of organizational failure and death.
A hypothetical model of the process of cell-wall expansion.
Natural seletion
Oncosis Process
Color mixtures of refracted light—additive process.
When a Tornado Strikes: Social Organization Following a Natural Disaster
The General Process of Sensation